


i tried to follow your voice (i couldn't find it)

by ddeulgi



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, umm what the hell is this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 07:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13566048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddeulgi/pseuds/ddeulgi
Summary: The five times Mina lies and the one time she doesn't.





	i tried to follow your voice (i couldn't find it)

**Author's Note:**

> cross-posted on aff
> 
> if anyone's interested: [this](https://soundcloud.com/user-237194382/sets/i-tried-to-follow-your-voice-i) is a whole ass minayeon playlist i whipped up while writing this hehe

This isn’t the first time, but it’s the _first_ time she can remember: 

Nayeon’s nose is buried in a book, stacks of papers and post-it notes scattered all over her desk. She’s in one of her oversized shirts, a couple buttons undone because the air conditioner has always been a little too stubborn and short circuits at the worst possible times. The apartment is tiny, cramped, a human-sized box at most, but Mina’s starting to call it home. 

“I’ve got work to do,” Nayeon says, but Mina knows she doesn’t really mean anything by it. She slips onto her lap, easily, and Nayeon doesn’t even complain. There’s a ghost of a smile on her lips and Mina only presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth, arms lazily looped around the other girl’s neck. 

“One more time, and then I’ll leave you alone for the rest of the day. Promise?” 

“Just make it quick,” is all she says, between short bouts of laughter because Mina tucks her face into the crook of her neck and nudges that one little spot under her jaw she’s always been ticklish at. Her book is put down, pages against the table, and she holds her hand out regardless, watches the way Mina’s fingertips dance across the creases of her palm.

(“One, two, three, a temps levé, watch my legs— Nayeon, are you watch— hey, hey, hey, wait— let go!”

There’s arms that lock around her waist, and before she knows it, Nayeon is lifting her up — failing terribly — and then they’re both on the ground, Mina on top of Nayeon. Her arms and legs are spread out starfish-style, and Mina only prods at her cheek, just to make sure she’s okay. The sound of regret that comes out of Nayeon makes her grin.

“Pasta for two, right? With double croissants,” Nayeon says, hands moving to rest comfortably on top of her thighs.

That makes Mina laugh. Her shoulders shake, her eyes twinkle, and Nayeon feels her heart swell ten times bigger.

“It’s a pas de deux,” she manages to say between a couple lingering laughs, smile wide as a finger trails down the curve of Nayeon’s cheek, “not pasta for two. And by double croissant, I think you meant a double cabriole." 

“Oh,” Nayeon says lamely. Her cheeks heat up out of apparent embarrassment and Mina only leans down, nudging her nose with her own.  

“Your memory’s always been terrible. An A for effort though.” There’s a light pat to Nayeon’s cheek. “Plus, I appreciate you watching me review.”

“I like watching anything you do,” Nayeon murmurs, lips pursing for a kiss.

Mina leans in close enough for the glint in Nayeon’s eyes to turn smug, and she smoothes her hands down on the girl's shoulders instead, pushing herself up and off the girl rather than giving her the kiss she was supplicating for. Nayeon complains for a solid minute.)

“You should get back to your work,” Mina says, nudging Nayeon softly. 

They’ve found comfort on the ground despite their earlier mishap — Mina claims it’s just a dancer’s thing, you know, finding her heart on the floor, and Nayeon’s stopped bickering with her about it because she guesses she’ll just never understand. She’s snug between Nayeon’s legs, and the other girl hooks her chin on her shoulder, arms wrapped loosely around her waist. The sun is starting to set with its oranges and reds splattered across the sky outside, and it’s a tiny bit reminiscent of the very first time Nayeon kisses her. 

(It's a Thursday, and one night with a whole bunch of popsicles ended up changing both of their lives for, well, the better:

They're sitting shoulder to shoulder, hands sticky with the remnants of melting popsicles they finish in thirty minutes flat. It’s the result of summer break boredom, and Jeongyeon, Nayeon’s next door neighbor who also ended up getting brain freeze from only one popsicle and had to run all the way back home, said there was no way anyone could finish a whole box of bomb pops in under an hour. Nayeon, easily, and also Mina, dragged into this against her will, begged to differ. 

(They're in the midst of what everyone calls these days — the “talking" phase — and of course Nayeon’s going to drag the so-called “girl of her dreams” into every stupid thing she’s roped into by Jeongyeon. She’s _the_ one, she’ll tell anyone who asks, because Mina even said yes to another burger date after an incident with a faulty ketchup bottle and one too many fries.)

With a hand pressed flat against the skin of Nayeon's thigh in attempt to piss her off and leave a sticky red and blue hand print, Mina chooses the wrong moment to turn her head and quite literally, she feels her breath catch in her throat.

Nayeon had always been pretty in a way that makes all the other girls green-eyed jealous, especially ever since she traded the glasses that were too big for her face for contacts and gotten her braces off. But Mina doesn't expect her to be _this_ pretty with all types of orange and yellow glows highlighting the curvature of her nose and the bend of her jaw. It takes a good minute for Nayeon to realize she's been staring like an absolute creep, but Nayeon — insanely pretty and sweet Nayeon — only bops her on the nose, nudges her lightly in the ribs, and sets her heart on fire.

"I think it's the bomb pops talking,” Nayeon says suddenly after a few beats of silence, seems level-headed but also in the middle of a sugar high to say something like that. "But I want to kiss you. Is that bad?"

Mina feels that rapid speed-up of her heart against her ribs and almost doubles over. “I-I wouldn't think so," she manages, shyly. "Do you think it is?"

Nayeon scoots a little closer to her and Mina doesn't mind. "Well, I don't think I would've asked if I did.”

She works a tiny smile, already feels that flush growing at the base of her neck, “Touché."

Nayeon’s just staring at her like she’s the prettiest girl in the world, like she’s the only thing that exists here in _this_ very moment, and it makes Mina melt. Just a little. (A lot.) “Plus, I’m kind of tired of telling everyone I don’t like you.”

“So you do? Or you don’t?”

“Nah, I don’t,” Nayeon throws back at her, playful, “I don’t like you.”

Then, Nayeon’s leaning in before she can reply, and it’s characteristically saccharine, as expected of all the ice pops she’s eaten, on her tongue and Mina realizes that Nayeon kisses exactly like how she thought she would — like sugar, thick and sweet, and pure adoration all in one.

“I don’t like you,” she repeats for good measure, against her mouth, and Mina knows what she means anyway.)

 

-

 

Its become a thing between them, _their_ kind of thing:

“I don’t love you.” Nayeon ends up sprawled out across the ground again (funny, because Nayeon’s declared the floor as a mortal enemy more than once), book kicked away and ash brown locks falling over her face as she reaches over to lock her fingers with Mina’s. 

“I don’t love you,” she says in return, grin wide. 

 

-

 

The second time, it’s weeks after Nayeon’s been in an accident. 

She’s been hit by a car, one that careens a little too fast down the road and zooms past that red light, cracked her skull and the doctors, with their eight year degrees and shiny tools, promise they’ve fixed her. (A few metal plates to patch her up, titanium pins screwed in to her bones, a whole bottle of painkillers to make it easier.)

And the first time she visits her, she looks at her like she’s someone she’s never met before.

She never comes with the other people even though she should; the doctor said it would be better for Nayeon to see her more, since the people who’ve been the closest to her are more likely to trigger memories. Nayeon’s distant, however; sometimes hateful, oftentimes distressed, all the time hurtful. The doctor says it’s normal, tells her not to take it to heart, but Mina finds herself losing her heart a little bit more each time anyway.

(She can’t find _her_ anywhere when she looks at her in the eyes. The doctors say they’ve fixed her up, put her back in tip-top shape, but all they’ve done is give her a body housing someone else.)

Two weeks later, she finds herself hesitating with her fingers ghosting over the door knob. It’s almost pathetic, how she visits all the time, visits a girl that may never remember her for the rest of her life, but she’s here— she’s here and trying to salvage every last bit of dying hope she can get her hands on. Because maybe, maybe one day the girl she’s so foolishly given her heart to will look at her and see _her_. 

It’s almost pathetic, how she chases after a girl that doesn’t even remember the exact way she used to say her name. She’s better than that. (She’s not.)

A nurse passes by and unsurprisingly, she recognizes her. Mina wishes she didn’t.

“You’re here again? Everyone else left about an hour ago, so you can have her all to yourself for the rest of the day.”

She responds with a mere nod, fingers grasping around the handle, wrist locked into place. 

“I know it’s been hard, but you must really love her a lot to face this with her. Hang in there.” The nurse’s words have her turning to face her briefly. She wonders if it’s worth the trouble to slap away the pen she's wagging in front of her or maybe snap her clipboard in two. 

Instead, her wrist turns, and she pushes the door open and murmurs,

“I don’t love her,” before she slams the door shut behind her. 

 

-

 

The third time, it is back in their tiny box of a home. 

Nayeon is tired, a given, considering the fact that she was only discharged a few hours ago. She falls asleep quickly, curled up in bed with her socks still on (Nayeon hates wearing socks to sleep) while Mina puts her stuff away and tidies up whatever she can. Nayeon had made a beeline toward the bedroom after asking Mina where it was, and she thankfully doesn’t catch the cans and cans of cheap beer scattered about in the living room. (Mina doesn’t drink.) But it’s not like she’d remember anyway, and Mina tells herself it doesn’t hurt, that it shouldn’t hurt just because she  _doesn’t_ remember.

She sits on the other edge of the bed, eyes trained carefully on a slumbering Nayeon in case she accidentally wakes her up with all the movement. The distance between them is unnatural, but _all_ of this is unnatural and Mina can’t even bring herself to scoot a little closer. She supposes it’s the outcome of this, whatever _this_ is, because that’s the only thing about them these days: distance. The only thing even keeping them within relative orbit of each other is patchy tape and glue (because they’ve been reduced from porcelain to plastic now), but even that is starting to peel at the edges lately. 

Nayeon is home, but it still feels like it’s empty. (It is.)

Nayeon is here, but it still feels like she isn’t. (She’s not.)

“I don’t love you,” she whispers, reaching over to brush away the overgrown bangs that fall over Nayeon’s eyes.

“I don’t love you,” she repeats when she gets up, shuts the door behind her, and her stomach twists in a way that makes her feel sick. 

“I don’t love you,” she says and says and says, but it still feels like she does.

(She does.) 

 

-

 

The fourth time, it’s straight though her teeth, raw and intimate. 

Some days, Nayeon’s got her pressed underneath her, fingers curled around her wrists but not hard enough to cut off circulation. She kisses her messily, not a second mindful of the intensity — it’s all tongue and clicking teeth, and she parts her mouth so she can feel herself chase that moan right out of her lungs.

She supposes this is what she gets. For staying when everyone’s already told her to go. 

(The girl she’s given her heart to is just trying to figure out what she should do with it. She’s trying, Mina has to remind herself because it’s getting a little harder to believe these days. She’s _trying_.) 

It stings, this feeling the lodges itself deep in her chest, the urge to wrap her arms around Nayeon's shoulders, dig her face in the crook of her neck, call out her name in a way she _should_ know best and she _might_ be lucky enough to get a response back. She hates how she’s here, vulnerable under the girl she’s given so much to, the way she touches her, unfamiliar and nothing like before, the way Nayeon’s scent sticks, melts right into her skin, and drives her well to the point of insanity.

(I don’t love you. I don’t love you. I don’t love you. I don’t love you.)

She ruts against her, wild and desperate, hands raking down Nayeon’s back and nails digging harshly into her skin, and the other girl only gives and gives and gives. Even if she doesn’t remember her, Nayeon still gives the same way and just for a fleeting second, Mina thinks not all hope is lost. She comes, loud and red-faced, mouth agape and stars in her eyes, and Nayeon lets her ride it out for as long as she can. It’s the least she can do. 

When Nayeon’s done, she tucks the blanket over her, up to her chin, lets her hands linger against her skin for seconds too long, and then leaves her be. (There you are, Mina wants to say, but then again she _isn’t_.) She ends up perched on the side of the bed, shoulders slumped, arms slack. Her hair’s messy and the red, hot marks across her back look foreign. Looks angry, looks like nothing she’s ever marked on Nayeon although its all starting to feel the same these days. Mina chooses not to think anything of it. 

It’s fine, she consoles herself. It’s fine. She’s fine. She’s used to this now. This is what they are.

Nayeon doesn’t turn to look back at her when she finally moves, bed creaking, and slides back on the clothes Nayeon’s strewn across the floor.

“I don’t love you,” is all she says, and Nayeon pretends she doesn’t hear the desperation she tries to hide between shaky breaths.

Something in Nayeon’s chest burns.

 

-

 

They say the more you lie, the easier it gets. Bullshit. 

It’s all make-believe, a hoax that people can force themselves into believing for as long as they want. No one talks about the dull thud in the bottom of your heart, the increased effort to drag every single word out of your throat. No one ever talks about how it feels like something’s growing in the chest, dark and heavy, painful and overbearing, no one ever talks about how terrible you feel, how it always feels like your heart is squeezing itself against every crevice of your ribcage out of spite. Nothing about how everything inside twists and knots in the worst of ways, how the stomach feels like its sinking to the ground either.

She feed lies into a mouth that forgets the flavour and takes it as the truth, and she has to remind herself that it’s fine, that that’s just how it is now and she has to suck it up and deal with it. It feels useless these days, pining after something— someone that may never come back. She can’t keep trying to breathe life back into a body that refuses to take it. She can’t keep trying to find a girl that doesn’t want to be found. 

They tell her to go. She resorts to the next worst thing: moving on. 

(She doesn’t want to, but it happens. Sana introduces her to someone, and Mina doesn’t have it in her to tell her that her heart is still elsewhere, kept together with a tacky scotch tape job and locked in the hands of a girl that drops it more times than she’s supposed to. She wonders how it’s doing.)

“I met someone,” she says, slowly, eyes trained on Nayeon and ready to take in whatever response she has in store. “I'm going to marry her.”

Pretending that _this_ doesn’t hurt is easy. Nayeon doesn’t even look like she’s paying attention to her when she talks, and she convinces herself that that's not her heart tearing apart in the back of her ears, at the terribly patched seams after months and months of careful cradling and flickering hope.

“Her name is Momo,” she continues. Nayeon hums.

She _loves_ me, she wants to say, but keeps her mouth screwed shut when Nayeon still doesn’t give her much of a reaction. She wonders if it’s worth it anymore, to get down on her knees and beg for something better than the silence she’s been given.

She hates this, _this_ , or whatever the hell they’ve become. (This is not you.)  

Nayeon’s in one of her oversized shirts — it’s Mina’s, but she’s better off not knowing that — again, but it feels nothing like the Sundays she used to spend dancing in the palms of Nayeon’s hands. It’s a pathetic picture, this one, because she keeps searching and searching for someone that refuses to be found and her heart tells her what she wants is here, alive and breathing and in front of her, but no, no, _no_ — it’s not. 

(Where are you? Where are you? Where are _you_? Please come back to me.) 

In her life, however, she'll always gets what she doesn’t want.

“Do you love me?” It’s the first and only thing Nayeon says.

She gets up, feels a familiar weight press itself down into her chest. Her knees feel weak and she prays and prays and prays to someone that’s unfortunate enough to be listening that Nayeon can’t hear her heart warping in her chest, can’t hear it beating violently against her ribcage, desperate attempts to crack bone. (She wonders, however, if Nayeon can feel it, too, because her jaw’s wound tight, and her eyes are empty in a way Mina’s never really seen before.) 

“No,” and surprisingly, she doesn’t look back when she leaves.

(It’s easier to pretend she doesn’t.)

 

-

 

She feels like a stranger in her own fairytale, like she’s living in someone else’s fantasy clad in pure white and satin. It doesn’t feel right, none of this does, but she hasn’t been feeling right things these days anyway.

The person she is marrying is too perfect for her — her smiles parallel the luminescence of the sun, she tries and tries to breathe a makeshift heart into the empty cavity in Mina’s chest, and she tells her she _loves_ her, through thick and thin and all her highs and lows. It’s a kind of affection Mina isn’t used to — she doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve her, no, not at all — but she’s so desperate to cling onto some form of hope these days that she can’t help it. 

(Momo _loves_ her. No one else, just _her_. Mina feels terrible. She thinks Momo knows.) 

She pretends she doesn’t look for Nayeon when she’s allowed a few seconds to peek through the tiny crack of the chapel doors, under the guise of surveying how many guests make it. (It’s easier to pretend, because here she is, hopelessly, pathetically, searching for her, her and only _her_. She probably didn’t even come.) But there she is: a split-second glimpse before the crack is shut close and she pretends she doesn’t feel her stomach drop to the balls of her feet. Pretends that that isn’t her heart constricting painfully within her chest, that she can get on with this wedding— _her_ wedding—

Wrong.

(She can’t. She can’t. She _can’t_.)

She’s getting so used to having her heart thrown around lately and swallowing the same sort of venom spit at her over and over again that it doesn’t feel as bad as it should when she breaks a heart that isn’t her own. This must be how it ends for her. 

(She never deserved this. Not Momo. Not Nayeon, definitely _not_ Nayeon. She doesn’t deserve anything.) 

 

-

 

She wonders where this all went wrong, how this turned out to be a matchstick romance that sparks once or twice and then burns out and kills everyone with it. She wonders if this is how they’re meant to end up. 

She’s like harsh winds these days, and Nayeon is her hurricane — there is destruction in gestures that are supposed to be tender, fire in words that spit the same truth at her, the kind that’s already nicked into the mangled tissues of her heart. Nothing about them meshes together anymore — it’s more pain rather than relief whenever they collide now — yet she still finds herself here, here and only here, still unconsciously yearning for someone that will never, never ever come back. She can’t shake her, and even though she rants and orates about how much she doesn’t love her (and she doesn't, she _doesn’t_ love her, not at all), something inside her chest tears and bleeds every single time.  

She’s taken a liking to counting nowadays: all the seconds, minutes, hours, and days until her heart beats and beats and beats for someone it shouldn't until it doesn’t anymore. 

One.

They somehow find their way back to all the way to their beginnings, on the floor of their tiny home that only feels a lot emptier and smaller these days.

Nayeon doesn’t question her when she finds her in the middle of the living room, only prods over to nudge her leg and tell her to make room. 

(She hates being on the floor.)

One, two.

Nayeon’s in a baggy shirt that she knows is Mina’s, book in hand because she’s starting to pick back up the things she’s left behind. They sit close enough for their knees to knock every once in a while, but not enough to start reaping the memories from many months ago. The air conditioner, with its signature whirring and clicking, still doesn’t work correctly, but it’s the only thing here that remains the same. 

One, two, three. 

“Do you love me?” 

Nayeon asks this a lot these days. Mina thinks (or, wants to believe) it’s because Nayeon still knows her even though she doesn’t; she’s never been Nayeon’s best habit, even now, when she’s nothing at all, but letting her suck up all the oxygen from her allowed Nayeon to know the best and worst parts about her.

(One: Mina can’t lie.)

Sometimes she replies, and sometimes she doesn’t. It’s the same answer every time and Mina wonders how much longer she can handle it, how many more times Nayeon will ask before she figures out it’s futile and stops. 

This time, however, it hurts. It’s different from all the other times. It feels like something digging deep into her bones, and Mina feels her heart constrict in a way she doesn’t want it to. Nayeon’s looking at her in a way she can’t decipher nowadays, gaze skittish around her frame. She feels small, impossibly so, and every inch of her body wants to cave in and disappear. 

They say you’re granted one act of selfishness when you’ve given up everything you have. Mina supposes this is it:

The first time she tells the truth is on a Sunday afternoon. The same kind of Sunday she used to dance ballet in someone’s hands. 

“Yes,” she whispers, feels something in her chest break, and misses the way Nayeon’s expression shifts. 

(She can’t hear that off beat that pulses deep within Nayeon’s heart, like something’s falling in place for the first— no, not the first time. It doesn’t feel like the first time.)

She figures the “I don’t love you”s are starting to lose their meaning, if they ever had any in the first place, and soon they’ll be nothing at all. Just like they once were. Everything, and then nothing at all. 

(Though whatever they are now, whatever they have now, it’s _never_ been truly absolutely nothing.) 

It isn’t us, all the "I don’t love you”s, she tells herself. It isn’t us. It isn’t us anymore.

This is:  

“I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> first twice fic... yay i guess  
> i actually don't like this (lol) my writing remains terrible  
> its been 8 months since the last time i wrote a something fic-wise... and this is what i come up with smh
> 
> thanks for reading!!


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